Beyond the facade of lush green fields, the smell of death and decay permeates the air in Chief Minister M Karunanidhi’s district. It took just a fortnight for the fear of a failed monsoon to turn into a nightmare, of a flood that left 40 dead, half the population homeless and lakhs of hectares of crop destroyed.

In fact, on November 17, Tamil Nadu Cauvery Delta Farmers’ Welfare Association general secretary Mannarkudi S Ranganathan met district officials to urge them to release more water as the monsoon was yet to set in, though it had been a month into the season. “I told the District Collector our crops were withering, fields cracking up for want of water. Two days later, we received mild showers, followed by good rains (28.64 mm and 21.12 mm respectively) on the next days. But we never expected what was to follow.”

Aided by the cyclonic storm Nisha, the first one of such intensity to hit the Tamil Nadu coast in 31 years, the district received 158.3 mm, 219.06 mm and 99.59 mm of rain on three days, starting from November 26. Pamaniar — a tributary of Cauvery — and Koraiyar, two irrigation-cum-floodwater channels running parallel to each other, breached their banks as the inflow rose to nearly four times their capacity. Soon, water levels in the paddy fields were up by as much as 12 feet.

“We receive an average of 1,230 mm every year, whereas we received 476.95 mm in just three days,” District Collector M Chandrasekaran explained. Lying downstream in the Cauvery delta, floodwater from the region accumulated in Thiruvarur, causing massive damage.

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